


Grow Fonder

by ezlebe



Category: IT (Movies - Muschietti), IT - Stephen King
Genre: Alternate Universe - Everyone Lives/Nobody Dies, Coming Out, Disjointed Vignette-Style, Drinking, Drunken Confessions, M/M, Mutual Pining, Requited Love, body image issues, long distance flirting
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-05
Updated: 2020-12-05
Packaged: 2021-03-09 18:53:40
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 14,446
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27901054
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ezlebe/pseuds/ezlebe
Summary: “So, uh,” Richie leans heavily into the door, running a hand through his hair. “I think I’m finally drunk and exhausted enough to – ” he takes a deep breath, paired with a markedly awkward laugh. “To ask. Did you uh – So. So. In like 1997, my improv group from Rochester did a guest thing at NYU? And after – ”“Yes,” Eddie interrupts, realizing what Richie is asking with a sear of heat across the back of his neck. “That was me.”“Oh,” Richie intones, though it comes off as more like a choked exhale.
Relationships: Eddie Kaspbrak/Richie Tozier
Comments: 51
Kudos: 426





	Grow Fonder

**September**

“Hey,” a voice greets, paired with a knock on the edge of the jamb.

Eddie glances up from zipping his toiletry bag, peering at Richie’s slightly swaying form, then throws it toward his luggage while he raises his eyebrows. “Hey?”

“So, uh,” Richie leans heavily into the door, running a hand through his hair. “I think I’m finally drunk and exhausted enough to – ” he takes a deep breath, paired with a markedly awkward laugh. “To ask. Did you uh – _So_. So. In like 1997, my improv group from Rochester did a guest thing at NYU? And after – ”

“Yes,” Eddie interrupts, realizing what Richie is asking with a sear of heat across the back of his neck. “That was me.”

“Oh,” Richie intones, though it comes off as more like a choked exhale.

Eddie clears his throat, glancing uselessly back down to his bag. Great. He hoped, after Richie didn’t say anything before, maybe this would never be brought up at all.

“Glad to be uh, part of your experimental phase there, Spagheds,” Richie says, laughing awkwardly again, his voice still barely more than a croak.

“It wasn’t really a phase,” Eddie admits quietly, shrugging smally; he turns his hand on his lap, wedding band around his finger, and starts working it up the knuckle. He already told her it was over yesterday, sure he would die and needing to do one single thing for himself first, in a pair of paragraph texts; he still hasn’t turned the phone back on. “I ended up reconnecting with my mom, not long after, and – and she was… you know, so shit happened.”

“Fuck,” Richie says, heartfelt, but not particularly pityingly – perhaps, even empathetic.

“I’m not sure I’m even really bi,” Eddie says, a little in disbelief of his own tongue; he did drink his own share in a fucked up version of early-morning celebration, but he’s also pretty sure that he wouldn’t admit the same to say, Ben, so it’s probably just that it’s fucking Richie, like it always is with anything. “I guess maybe enough that Myra isn’t completely repulsive.”

Richie pulls a comically wincing face, but for once it doesn’t seem on purpose.

“Pretty sure she knows, honestly,” Eddie says, thinking of the carefully separate guest bedroom that is all but officially his, if it weren’t for sparse visits from Myra’s family. “Or she thinks I’m asexual.”

“She clearly didn’t know college Eddie,” Richie says, a quirk at the edge of mouth, heralding a lazy, shitty joke. “Little twink Lothario, seducing wide-eyed comedians in bars.”

“Fuck off,” Eddie says, hoping Richie is too drunk to notice the heat flushing up his neck. “And no, I wasn’t, really. It’s… complicated.”

He had _never_ done that, actually; he’d had one sort of boyfriend, thoroughly vetted and tested before he’d even kiss, but when he met Richie, he went a little crazy for a night. He knows why _now_ , but at the time he had been half-convinced he encountered some kind of theatre dork version of an incubus, driving him to suck a stranger’s dick in an unsanitary men’s room.

“Hey, you know what we should do?” Richie says, coughing shortly into his fist and thunking it against the jamb. “Make a thing out of it. We’ll both come out.”

Eddie feels his mouth twitch with a reluctant smile, looking down and seeing it in the reflection of his bandaged face on his dead phone. He hadn’t been certain, about Richie, between the gratingly straight comedy and the way he’d been so hesitant touching Eddie’s dick twenty years ago. “Sure.”

“I’m serious!” Richie continues, pitching into some vague action hero Voice. “Right here, right now, we don’t let the bastard clown win.”

Eddie blinks in bemusement when he hears another thunk and Richie quietly curse, then looks up to see him fumbling with his phone, plainly and drunkenly determined. “Shit!” He dives for the phone and exhales a relieved breath when he sees that the tweet is only half-typed and barely coherent. “Holy fuck, man, you need to sleep on it, at least – isn’t this like a big deal?”

Richie slumps forward with a heavy, bursting sigh. “…Huge.”

“Come on,” Eddie says, grabbing Richie’s wrist and tugging him out into the hall, down toward his room. “Lay down. Sober up a little.”

Richie’s room has the door open against the latch, so Eddie pushes in, glancing across the sloppily made bed and down at the sad little duffle deflated on the foot of it. He lets go of Richie and pulls the bedding down before nudging him onto the mattress, and thinks he should be less surprised than he is when Richie forces him to follow in with a low whine in the back of his throat and a clasping arm looped at his waist.

Eddie allows it with a sigh, sitting up against the headboard and trying to convince himself he’s only going to stay until Richie falls asleep; except, it’s warmer in here and he’s never been stabbed in its adjoining bathroom. He glances at the duffle again, nudging it with his foot, and realizes it’s the only piece of luggage in the whole room.

“Did you say you were on tour?”

“Yeah?” Richie mumbles, throwing the blankets back and forth over them with a drunken look of frustration. “So?”

“No reason,” Eddie mutters, determined not to examine too close why that troubles him.

He should be thinking about the flight he has in twelve hours; the looming need for his own nap; the pressing urgency to separate from his arrested development of a shit fucking life. He can retire early, technically – he could take his investments and go off to fucking Nevada, then gamble his life away by fucking _choice_.

“You know, you – you were the first person to ever suck my dick,” Richie announces with a mild stammer, non sequitur and inexplicably reverent, like this is some sort of high accolade. “But also the best.”

Eddie doesn’t quite believe that first part, as Richie was and is his own sort of charming and hardly ugly, and outright rejects the second. He looks down to Richie, laying flat on his back, and raises a brow. “Bullshit. I made you wear a condom.”

“Safety first,” Richie says, chuckling tiredly, turning over on the bed and digging his forehead into Eddie’s hip. “I – I could’ve just wife’d you up right there. That good.”

Eddie swallows shallow and reaches out, hesitantly smoothing his hand down Richie’s shirt across his back, and hates that such a dumbass statement makes his heart hurt. “Yeah? Pretty sure I was the one on a knee.”

“Mmm, yeah,” Richie says, nestling further into the bed with a low grumble, shuffling back and forth until he finds some imprecise comfort. “Always… sounded better, anyway.”

Eddie looks down, hand pausing on Richie’s back with his fingertips across a shoulder. “What?”

“Richie Kaspbrak,” Richie says, little more than an especially murmuring exhale.

Eddie blinks rapidly, then looks up at the ceiling while he exhales a quiet, “Oh.”

Richie conspicuously falls asleep only seconds later, mouth half-open where his face is dug into Eddie’s hip. It’s understandable, considering how long it’s been since he’s – since _any_ of them slept, and barely even annoying to the point that Eddie almost feels like he’s taking advantage somehow, as he himself blinks slower and slower, his chin dropping to his chest while his body starts to feel comfortably like lead. He’ll get up soon, he decides, but for now he can just doze here for a couple minutes, until he knows for sure Richie is totally passed out.

He wakes in a panic sometime later, as he blindly, instinctively shoves back at something clutching on his shirt, but thankfully it takes just a few seconds of choked breaths to realize that it’s only Richie. He looks at the ceiling while trying to take a steadier breath, then looks down to see his hands shaking while he reaches down to awkwardly hover over Richie’s trembling, wheezing form. He doesn’t know what to do with Richie still in the thralls of an evident nightmare – he can’t really move him, because god, he’s so fucking _big_ now.

“Eds?!” Richie chokes suddenly, eyes bursting open and his hands tightening into a firm grip uncomfortably tight at his lower ribs. “Eddie!”

“You’re okay,” Eddie whispers hoarsely, trying to further calm Richie with a few hurried pats at his hair. He looks up when he has an untimely bit of déjà vu at the sight of Richie’s hand spread wide across his lower abdomen. “Just a nightmare.”

“Can you – ” Richie exhales a shaky breath, eyes noticeably damp and lips hesitating around his words. “Can you n-not sit like that? Lay down?”

“Uh, I – uh, sure,” Eddie says, slumping down in the bed until he’s on his back with his head against the hard pillows. “I didn’t mean to fall asleep, I can go – ”

“No, don’t – it’s okay,” Richie mutters, hand still clutching loosely around Eddie’s chest, not quite so panicked but certainly encouraging him to stay in the bed. “Just… just don’t sit like that.”

“Okay,” Eddie says, quietly, hesitantly curling his arm over Richie’s shoulder when he presses his forehead into Eddie’s ribs with a heart wrenching shudder. “You good, Rich?”

Richie exhales a croak that might have been a laugh. “ _You_ good?”

“Not really,” Eddie admits, looking back up to the ceiling with a hard swallow.

“Yeah,” Richie mutters, his sniffle badly muffled by Eddie’s shirt. “Me neither.”

Eddie wets his lips, then drags his teeth hard against the lower. He feels on the verge of making a very rash decision; except, not really, because he’s technically already done it, he just… didn’t have such a literally solid reason.

He’s not sure if Richie actually goes back to sleep, but he doesn’t think any more about going back to his room. He lays there for what must be a few hours, dozing here and there, holding Richie and absorbing the sensation of deep breaths expanding against his chest; he’s not sure the last time he actually did this with another person, and wonders, pointlessly and a little miserably, if it had actually been with Richie. The memories that are slowly, surely filtering back into Eddie’s mind make him out to have been a cuddly drunk for pretty much forever, since Bill angrily had them raid his parents’ liquor cabinet when he found out they were moving.

He peeks his eyes open with a sigh when he hears a knocking out in the hall, a shuffling of footsteps against the rugs. He realizes the others must be getting ready to get out of Derry.

 _He_ should be getting ready to get out.

“Richie,” Eddie says, glancing down and seeing Richie still ostensibly passed out, laying heavily, and a weak attempt to move confirms he’s pinned to the bed. “ _Richie_ ,” he repeats, shifting his arm and tightening it around Richie’s neck, slowly, until he wakes enough to start to squirm in the hold. “Wake the fuck up.”

“Shit,” Richie croaks, exhaling a groan that vibrates through Eddie and turning to dig his brow hard into his clavicle. “ _Fuck_. Hurry up and kill me before the hangover does.”

Eddie scoffs at the ceiling, loosening his arm and dropping it to the mattress behind Richie’s back. “You seriously haven’t grown up at all.”

“I wish,” Richie mutters, exhaling a shaky breath and then rolling away from Eddie and curling up tight on his other side, facing away, but now right on _top_ of Eddie’s fucking arm. “It’s going to take me way longer to get over this shit now than the last time you were around to choke me for passing out on you.”

Eddie rolls his eyes, yanking his hand out from under Richie. “Is your flight out tonight?”

Richie is quiet for a long few seconds, then groans, digging his face into a pillow that near muffles his voice. “It probably should be.”

Eddie nods slowly, opening his mouth, then closing it with a grimace; he needs to get out of… Derry. He shoves away and out of the bed with a sharp clear of his throat, trying to straighten his shirt that’s wrinkled while they slept, and is glad that Richie is facing away when his face starts to burn with a slowly tremendous embarrassment. He admitted to a hookup with Richie last night, he spoke it into the universe, and now standing next to him in a bed they just shared, it’s almost like it just happened again; granted, they didn’t even _get_ to a fucking bed that time.

The _only_ time.

“I’ve got mine at – ” Eddie reaches for a phone that isn’t in his pocket; right, he’s… avoiding his messages. Fuck his life – _fuck_. “Nine, I think. 9:06PM, or something stupidly specific like that.”

“Awesome,” Richie says, then drops into a less intelligible series of mumbles.

Eddie rolls his eyes, forcing a sigh that he hopes sounds irritated. “Get the fuck up, Trashmouth. No one gives a shit about your hangover.”

Richie make a mocking, sarcastic noise while Eddie turns his back, which rises in volume and devolves into a series of stupid not-words when Eddie pulls open the door to go back to his room. A conspicuous thump then echoes, sounding like it was onto the floor, so at least he seems to be following the suggestion.

Eddie makes his way around to the other Losers, getting pressed into hugs and made to promise he’ll get back to their texts. He doubles back to get his luggage, exhaling slow while he swings his carry-on over his shoulder, and reaches for his phone while grudgingly pressing his thumb to the power button. He turns around when there’s a knock at the doorway, reminiscent of earlier, and feels his neck flush a little while he looks up to confirm. “Rich.”

“You leaving?” Richie says, nodding with his chin up and a marked glance at Eddie’s bags.

“Yeah,” Eddie says, “You get a flight?”

Richie doesn’t answer for a beat, then nods a pair of times, eyes flicking over his shoulder to the hall then back to Eddie. “It’s at, you know,” he clears his throat, looking away again up and down the jamb sideways with raised eyebrows. “ _Nine-ish_.”

Eddie feels the the heat expand into his cheeks, rolling his lips into a flat line and more surprised than he probably should be when it comes to goddamn Trashmouth Tozier. “Are you serious right now?”

“Just trying to, you know, make it obvious if you were up for something… quick, or whatever,” Richie tips his head with a shrug, his tone flippant but his crooked smile not quite reaching his eyes, with one hand white-knuckled on his duffle over his shoulder. “I am _perpetually_ available.”

Eddie scoffs quietly, shaking his head and realizing he might hate himself of twenty years ago; he had blamed alcohol for thinking Richie was so amazing, with his messy overlong hair and wide grin, making stupid jokes up until the moment Eddie got him in the stall, and had tried until three days ago not to care that he never got a number. He takes a breath, anxiously choosing honesty while forcing himself to catch Richie’s eyes. “I can’t, Rich, I – I, I think it would end up more than just a hookup. To me.”

Richie stares openly for a few beats, smile fading and eyes growing even wider behind his lenses, until he abruptly exhales a worrying choke of a mumble that takes a second try to truly form words. “That’s alright, I mean – the first time _was_ kind of more than just a hookup to me.” He half-steps into the room before just as quickly stepping back, heel kicking loud in a stumble against the jamb. “And I maybe told everyone in my improv group you were a girl, _sorry_ , but if you asked, they’d all say I didn’t shut up about you for like six months.”

Eddie lets himself stare back, embarrassment ceding to disbelief. “What – _really_?”

Richie wets his lips before pressing them tightly together in a pale line. “It wasn’t like you just shoved me into the men’s room – we talked, too, it felt… like we really clicked, I guess,” He looks down, twisting his jacket in his hands. “Like I’d known you forever.”

Eddie swallows at a sudden ache lashing against his sternum. “Fucking clown.”

Richie’s nods with a single drop of his head, stepping backward out the doorway when Eddie grabs his suitcases. “Yeah. Clown.”

“Maybe, okay?” Eddie says, quietly, feeling heat burn across his ears and looking down while lugging his bags before he can catch whatever expression Richie makes at the change in his response. “I don’t fucking know. I don’t think I can even talk about this right now.”

“That’s okay,” Richie says, offering a stilted shrug while stepping down the stairs ahead of Eddie, swinging his bag back and forth with a weak, if earnest chuckle. “I totally thought you were going to say you were married.”

“Uh, y-yeah, uh – ” Eddie blinks at the discolored rug in front of him, far more caught off guard than he should be. He hadn’t read his messages; he got distracted by goddamn Richie, _again._ “Fuck.”

Richie pauses at the landing with a crack of laughter that is way too loud, proceeding into giggles that are infuriatingly hysterical.

“You guys okay?” Bev asks, peering over the bannister with a smile breaking across her upside down face.

Eddie promptly shoves Richie into continuing down the stairs with a hard jab of his suitcase wheel into an ankle. “Just _fine_! Thanks!”

“If you say so,” Bev mutters, but it’s fond, as she disappears back behind the bannister. “I’ll miss you assholes, too.”

* * *

“You were the only person I did that with,” Eddie admits, settled in next to Richie at Bangor Int’l Airport’s single restaurant and bar. He’s had probably more whiskey than he should, as someone who rarely drank before three days ago, soundly making his competitive streak with Richie’s endless bourbon and Dr Peppers a little stupid. “I didn’t really go to bars and definitely never hooked up with strangers at them, but – I guess some stupidly horny part of me knew you were you.”

Richie blinks and raises his eyebrows, a smirk at the corner of his mouth. “A _horny_ part?”

“Yeah, fuck, I don’t know,” Eddie says, rubbing up and down his face with a palm, but it doesn’t do much to sober him. “I mostly remember you kept squeezing my thigh whenever you laughed at your own jokes, you know, and maybe since I spent most of my teenage years jerking off thinking about you touching my legs, it sparked?”

Richie’s eyes get big again and his jaw drops, hands going up like he’s been accused of something criminal; he looks back over his shoulder at the rest of the bar. “You can’t just _say_ that.”

“Kind of did,” Eddie mutters, blinking slowly down at his drink and cursing alcohol – he did literally just say that out loud.

“ _Horny_ ,” Richie sputters, hand lurching across over his half-full tumbler with a scrape across the bar. “For me? I was – I looked like a – a pizza-faced Garth!”

Eddie opens and closes his mouth a few times, then narrows his eyes.

Richie proceeds to gesture wildly between them. “You called me that yourself!”

“We both looked like shit,” Eddie says, trying to be dismissive while also trying to remember who the fuck – oh! _Oh,_ Garth from Wayne’s World. “We were going through fucking puberty, Richie.”

“Are you kidding?! You were fucking cute as shit, you jailbait motherfucker,” Richie disagrees harshly, a little loudly for the relative quiet of the small airport bar.

Eddie rolls his eyes, opening his mouth to disagree with his own received insults, but the worst thing he can remember Richie saying is that he was too pretty to be a jock when he joined track. It’s not even technically insulting as much as emasculating, and really Eddie had just been embarrassed by Richie calling him pretty, like he always got when Richie got all… like _that_ with him.

“Meanwhile, you literally called me gross like sixty different ways when we were teenagers,” Richie continues, leaning into an elbow with a pair of raised brows and a pained-looking smirk. “Kind of hard to believe you were into _any_ part of me touching you, Spaghetti.”

“You had chest hair when we were seventeen!” Eddie snaps, pointing hard at the peek of said chest hair with his finger and feeling his face light up when he touches the skin underneath with a too-far lean forward. “I felt like a fucking gross-ass voyeur whenever you wore a shirt that wasn’t buttoned up right.”

Richie blinks widely, mouth dropping slightly open.

“And you were like all musky and you used to put your arm on my shoulder and I could smell your sweat on my shirt for like hours,” Eddie says, shoving his face into his hands and knocking his forehead against his forgot tumbler with a clank against the bar. “You were so masculine, Rich – it drove me fucking _nuts_.”

Richie stays offputtingly silent for a few seconds longer, then clears his throat in a way that sounds like a choke. “Those are super gay thoughts, Eds.”

“I know!” Eddie says, glaring at the bar top between his fingers, then squeezing his eyes shut while a wave of shame rolls over him. “Fuck. And then I always tried to compensate saying it was disgusting.”

Richie laughs, but it’s markedly awkward, even weak. “Eds.”

“I was such an asshole,” Eddie says, a flood of memories assaulting him of calling Richie various iterations of gross, almost always wild, near nonsensical exaggerations. “It literally never occurred to me you actually _listened_ , fuck. I-I’m sorry. I’m not why you – ” He looks up to gesture vaguely at his own face with his fingers, “Am I? I am, aren’t I – mother _fuck_.”

“No! I didn’t even like remember you, man,” Richie says, his fingers there and gone in a twitchy pat across Eddie’s curved shoulder. “The original you, anyway; it was like years ago, so chill. That and even most of the acne scars are gone by now.”

“It _isn’t_ cool, if you’re using it as self-effacing humor at fucking forty, Richie!” Eddie snaps, pressing his heels back into his eyes; oh Christ, he’s actually getting really upset – he wishes he hadn’t had so much whiskey. “You shouldn’t even accept my apology!”

“Well, I’m gonna,” Richie says, daring to smile, judging by the amused edge of his voice and the huffy almost-laugh with his next breath. “You talking about jerking off to me touching you and being into my sweat is kind of overshadowing crying about it twenty years ago.”

“You _cried_?” Eddie croaks, looking up from his hands while feeling his frown pull harder at his face.

Richie is quiet a beat, then his smile fades with a wince. “No?”

“Jesus fuck,” Eddie says, pressing his face again into his palms over the bar top, this time dropping his forehead straight into the disgusting, grimy wood.

“Are you really going to be like this about it?” Richie asks, his palm landing more solid on Eddie’s shoulder, bodily and distractingly curving close to him while he other hand loudly taps Eddie’s glass away down the bar.

“Yes,” Eddie mutters, peeking between his fingers when Richie’s hand settles close to his elbow, staring at it on the bar top while taking a beat to enjoy the weight of the one on his back. It takes all of his remaining restraint to keep from lilting sideways into Richie, to see if he might really hold him. “I liked that, too, you know.”

“Huh?” Richie says, turning a little weirdly and elbow dropping solidly to the bar, suddenly looking up at Eddie with a bent neck.

“Your hands being bigger,” Eddie says, dropping one of his own hands and spreading his fingers out next to Richie’s to make a display of the difference. “I got so obsessed with it when I noticed.”

“Oh, uh,” Richie says, wriggling his fingers in a series back and forth on the wood. “Looks like, yeah.”

* * *

**October**

“How about…” Richie starts, with just the hint of a transatlantic Voice for god knows what reason. “I just showed up at your office and whisked you away for a sandwich, or a coffee, or a little – ” His voice drops, accent deepening, “ _Afternoon delight.”_

“Yeah, sure,” Eddie says, rolling his eyes at the ground, glancing up when he catches a familiar sandwich board and taking a left for the entrance. He wishes Richie wouldn’t joke so blithely, as much as it makes him flush from the idea of how much he wants to say: _yes, of course, my new place is only a fifteen-minute walk, it’s more than enough time,_ because it just makes him feel worse that he has to say no. “I totally have visitors all the time – definitely wouldn’t lead to any questions.”

“Eh,” Richie intones, accent disappearing and humor noticeably sinking in just that single syllable, which does little to assuage the hollow growing in Eddie’s chest. “It’s not like you’re the only closeted finance guy on the planet.”

“Fuck you,” Eddie says, turning and shoving into the bodega with a short ding of the door. “It’s insurance.”

“Insurance for _money_ ,” Richie argues, then laughs shortly, going silent for a beat again before laughing again in a way that sounds more strangled. “You can just say you’re not into me, if you’re not into me.”

“I am,” Eddie snaps loudly, ignoring the startled stumble and consequent mess made by the person stocking a shelf of wrapped pastries. He’s gotten used to having some version of this fight almost every day, and some early mornings, when Richie calls at his 2AM to confirm that neither of them are all that good. Eddie thinks they’re getting there though, if slowly, “Fuck, Rich. It’s because of my prenup, _alright_? No fault and I don’t have to pay alimony, but a guy showing up so close to me filing for any reason might be seen as a red fucking flag.”

Richie goes quiet for a beat. “How did you manage that?”

“She didn’t read it, probably,” Eddie says, peeking into the boxes of protein bars and hovering over the usual peanut butter, then setting his jaw and grabbing the banana chocolate. He _can_ have cashews; he can, and – _and_ if he has some kind of attack, Richie is literally on the phone. “My mother had us all convinced I’d die at the drop of a hat, anyway.”

Richie immediately starts to mutter under his breath, words inaudible except for their sour nature, then pointedly clears his throat with a fake-y bright voice to follow. “And look at _you_ , Eds, still making her sign papers.”

“Yeah, well,” Eddie says, taking his protein bar from the counter with a longing glance at a sizzling egg sandwich; it’s going to take more than an allergy test to get over _that_ hang-up. “I still knew I was gay.”

Richie snorts loudly, then breaks into a kind of offensive squawk of laughter. “Right. Yeah.”

Eddie drops the phone to his shoulder while he pays for his bar and the coffee, stepping back out of the bodega with a glance toward a park he’s passed for the last month or so, peeking in the gate while he’s been acclimating to his new commute. He listens to Richie nattering on about his neighbors’ evident feud while he walks, nodding along silently and laughing a little when Richie puts on a low Voice that cannot be how his neighbor really sounds at all.

“Mark from Account Management,” Eddie says, settling onto a bench while taking a long pull off his coffee.

Richie pauses his story with a predictably comical sputter. “ _Who_?” 

“Closeted finance guys,” Eddie says, tearing open the packaging of the bar while holding the phone up with his shoulder, staring out across the coloring trees without really looking at them; he’s trying to imagine what Richie looks like, if he’s lounging on his deck at the pool he keeps bragging about or if he might be slumped in a sofa with his legs spread like a rudely attractive douchebag. “I caught him with a guy from the law firm in the floor below us – full on penetration over a desk. Didn’t look like the first time.”

“Damn, spicy gos,” Richie says, sounding amusingly blindsided by the story.

“And Marius, a guy on my team, once offered to take me home at a retirement party,” Eddie says, huffing slightly at the memory; Marius is about the same height as Eddie and a little slimmer, but he’d tried valiantly to do the tall-guy lean over him all the same. “He’s not bad looking, but not my type – super clean cut. Arnie from marketing makes a subtle pass at me every time I see him, which is predatory, but I only see him once a month or so. Jez is _out_ out, so I don’t know if he counts, but he’s offered me about a thousand pamphlets on self-actualization and acceptance with an obvious caveat he’s there with me every step.”

Richie stays quiet for a few beats, then barks out a laugh that sounds oddly tense. “I thought you worked in insurance, not the set of 90210.”

Eddie only wishes it was that mature. “Have you really never worked in an office? It’s like fucking high school.”

“And you’re the most popular twink in home room,” Richie says, pitchy into something that might loosely be termed Valley.

“Still forty, last I checked,” Eddie says, staring at the protein bar for a beat before taking a solid bite out of it; okay, it’s… banana-y in the artificial way, and he’s not sure he likes that, but he’s not feeling particularly like he’s going to have an asthma attack.

 _Panic_ attack.

“No, you’re not,” Richie says, matter of fact, “You’re thirty-nine and perky, baby – for a month longer, anyway – no wonder you’ve got half the office after you.”

Eddie pauses mid-sip on his coffee. “You remember my birthday?”

“Uh, _yeah_ ,” Richie says, sounding somehow offended by that being pointed out. “Do you not remember mine?”

“March,” Eddie says, his mind intrusively and meanly reminding him that he’s missed way too many of Richie’s birthdays. “Remember Bev’s?” He presses his lips together with a shake of his head, sliding the wrapper a little further down the bar. “Specifically Valentines 1991?”

“Oh, _shit_ ,” Richie says, voice picking up with schadenfreude and trailing into a hiss through teeth. “Ben remembered it was the day before when Bill didn’t, right?”

Eddie slowly nods. “9th grade was such a shit show.”

“And just after It, too,” Richie says, falling silent for a few beats, then exhaling a loud breath. “ _Cripes_.”

Eddie laughs at the sincere use of the word, covering his mouth for a beat before letting it drop, deciding after another beat that he’s going to stroke Richie’s ego some, as sort of an apology for denying to let him come to New York for the nth time. “I had like eight plans that Valentines to get you to kiss me while we were at Mike’s farm.”

Richie is conspicuously quiet for a beat, then outright scoffs. “You did _not_.”

“I did,” Eddie says, speaking firmly despite somehow _still_ being embarrassed twenty-seven years later of trying to get Trashmouth Tozier to notice him on freaking Valentines Day. He can’t even remember the details, just the vague notion of thinking Bev and Ben and _Bill’s_ shit was stupid, despite arguably being just as bad with a different focus. “They were all kind of the same cartoon-type thing where it just sort of happens – maybe you trip on a barn cat, or Stan shoves you, or you slip on ice out front at the awning. You probably don’t remember, but I nearly broke my arm again when I tried to fall into you over some hay.”

“I don’t, but… I thought about that shit all the time, too,” Richie says, his voice dropping a little quiet from his previous incredulity into something far less assured. “Though I was way too scared to try and orchestrate you falling into my arms, man; you were still constantly talking shit about AIDS and STDs.”

“Shit, yeah,” Eddie winces, adding another phase to the level of a little shit he was to Richie as a kid. “That was like a – I don’t know, Rich. I guess you never counted?”

Richie hums in response, uncharacteristically flat. “ _Thanks_.”

“Shut up, I mean like you weren’t…” Eddie doesn’t really get it himself, as sure enough he had been terrified of attraction to men in general, especially then with his mother’s voice endlessly shrieking between his ears, but at the same time… Richie had been different. Richie was like soft serve – his mother told him he was lactose intolerant, and it _was_ ice cream, but it also wasn’t because of how bad he wanted it, and he never questioned why it never actually made him sick, because he’d put it in a mental box where it wasn’t ice cream, it was _soft serve._ “It’s like… okay, remember that time you fucking ate ants when we were six because your sister told you they tasted like sugar, remember?”

“Oh yeah, because they were –”

“Sugar ants, yeah,” Eddie says, shuddering a little at just the memory; it’s fuzzy, being so long ago, but really not fuzzy enough, and he wishes that somehow It could have taken Richie talking about how ants _crawled_ on his _tongue_ out of his brain for good. “And I would’ve ran screaming if anyone else but you had done that. If Bill had done that? I never would’ve spoken to him again.”

Richie is quiet for a few seconds, then huffs a laugh. “You made me brush my teeth for an hour and drink like a gallon of water.”

“Because you ate bugs, Richard!” Eddie snaps, idly lifting his middle finger against the sidelong disapproval of a passing hipster with a double stroller.

“And you were into me, anyway,” Richie says, mostly good-humored, but there’s still an edge to his tone that reminds Eddie of his disbelief in the bar back in Bangor.

“Yeah, so what?” Eddie confirms, rolling his lips together, a fuzzy warm feeling in the center of his chest that he refuses to indulge much further – he can’t right now, even with how _much_ he wants to rewind the conversation back to Richie talking about coming to the city. “I’ve already told you I think you’re hot shit – stop fishing for compliments.”

Richie exhales a tetchy sort of laugh. “Hotter than the half of your office trying to bone you?”

Eddie rolls his eyes at the sky, gesturing aggressively with the coffee in his hand; great, so that’s what this is about. “ _Obviously_ , Richie.”

Richie makes a soft, surprised noise, so he had probably expected another joke in response.

“Are you really shocked by this?” Eddie asks, taking the last bite of his protein bar and shaking his head; he’s really at a loss on how to convince Richie that he’s into him if the last month of lunch phone calls that haven’t been _entirely_ rated G hasn’t done it. “You know I’m into you – that people in general are, even. You retweeted like thirty compliments about your new glasses that one time.”

“Yeah, but that was – Wait,” Richie pauses, proceeding into a hum that sounds pitch perfect to opening a chest in Zelda. “Now, Eds, wait just a _tickety boo_ …”

“What?” Eddie snaps, rolling his eyes hard while leaning over and throwing his wrapper into the trash next to the bench. “I don’t like new British guy, either – you’re not goddamn Mary Berry.”

“Well, uh,” Richie says, the uneven tone of it somehow managing to be undeniably smug. “Something has just very recently occurred to me – um, before we saw each other in Derry, Spaghetti Head, did you think you once sucked off _famous comedian_ Richie Tozier? Because that glasses thing was like three _years_ ago.”

Eddie pulls the phone from his ear for a beat, then exhales, turning the phone in his hand. “Sorry, Rich, I’m getting another call – ”

“ _Eds_!” Richie cackles, the noise breaking up a little, so he’s probably actually physically bowled over by his own humor. “You – ”

“Bye,” Eddie interrupts, hanging up and trying to will the heat in his face back under his skin. It hasn’t really been a secret, and it’s not like Richie could look up if he follows him, but it is… really embarrassing now that Richie knows about it.

Richie texts a few seconds later a gif of Homer Simpson sinking into a hedge moving across Eddie’s screen.

12:43PM _You_ >>

<<Fuck off. 12:44PM

<<You should get some aviator ones next to match your not so inner dweeb. 12:46PM

12:46PM _Stop my ego can only get so engorged_ >>

* * *

**November**

“It’s like some kind of weird ad,” Stan says, followed by papers shuffling in the background. “It seems kind of obscene with Ben, you know? But I think maybe she’s just trying to boost his confidence. I’m sure she’s planning to ask Richie and Bill to showcase the actual line at premiers and shows, and this is… fun?”

Eddie nods a little, eyes narrowed at his screen and frankly pretty unconcerned with whatever Stan has to say about the celeb loser Loser contingent. “Uh huh,” he mumbles belatedly, half-listening, dragging a connector arrow from the bottom of the plan to the top and editing the time. “Rich’ll do good. Tell him that.”

“Tell him?” Stan says, exhaling a short breath that’s not _quite_ a scoff. “I would’ve thought you’d say not to boost his ego.”

Eddie blinks a little out of his work fugue, leaning away from his screen with a short curl of his nose at the time. “Okay, you remember how I was kind of…” He pauses for a few beats, then decides to come out with it – it’s not as if Stan wasn’t _there_ for it. “An asshole to him in high school, remember, talking shit about him. How he looked.”

Stan hums quietly, “A little?”

“Anyway, he kind of… thought I was serious about it,” Eddie says, going through his windows and making sure to save every one, but it does little to distract him from how awkward he feels voicing this particular subject. “I’m trying to convince him I wasn’t – that he’s fine. Looks fine.”

“ _Oh_ ,” Stan says, his tone pitching and evening out in apparent realization. “Yeah. That phase where he tried not to stand next to you in pictures.”

Eddie feels his heart abruptly sink almost like it’s turned to physical stone. “He _what_?”

Stan doesn’t answer for a beat. “I thought you – ”

“No! I didn’t know that!” Eddie snaps, pulling completely away from his desk with a jerky, irked gesture at the opposite wall that does little to dismiss any of the sudden nausea he’s feeling over this new, awful information.

“You guys were just like that – constantly, annoyingly fucking with each other,” Stan says, “You were _both_ assholes, Eddie, I guess it was pigtail pulling, or whatever, but it was always him making you freak out about every fucking thing, while you always told him he wasn’t shit.”

“Pigtail pulling is just bullying!” Eddie insists with a snarl, pressing the heel of his hand to his forehead with a tight grimace. He can’t believe that he never noticed that; it could’ve been they didn’t take a lot of pictures, maybe? And what did Richie even think would happen – that Eddie might cut him out of them? “And he did shit that made me freak out, yeah, but I never _felt bad._ I made him _feel bad_ , Stan. He makes jokes about how bad he looks _to this fucking day_.”

“Eddie.” Stan draws out his name in a way that has to be pointed. “Slow down.”

“Fuck you,” Eddie says, leaning back in his chair with a mildly worrying creak of plastic, but he has bigger things to worry about right now – like how much being an immature little asshole poorly effected the one guy he wants to be into him forever. It almost makes him want to text Richie something random that he likes about him, but then he’d probably pick up that Eddie must be talking about him. “You know he still even put up with all my shit right up to the end – like with prom. Why the fuck would he? Insecure dick.”

Stan doesn’t respond for a few seconds, then hums lowly, almost suspicious. “Neither of you even went to prom.”

“We still did our own thing,” Eddie says, hearing his voice raise even further and wondering why the hell that Stan even cares about that part; it’s not about the fucking _prom_. “What about it?”

“I thought you couldn’t go out that night?” Stan says, still audibly bemused, seeming determined to pull the conversation in a totally pointless direction. “Threats of bars on the windows.”

“…I technically didn’t,” Eddie admits, remembering too late that their prom night had been sort of a secret. He doesn’t remember ever talking about it _being_ one, but he also doesn’t remember ever discussing it with any one else after that night. “Richie brought over movies.”

“He –?” Stan goes quiet for a few seconds, then sighs, sounding annoyingly put-upon. “What movies?”

“Alien and Aliens,” Eddie says, deciding not to mention Ghost, which had maybe been a sort of date movie, which he did not realize until this literal moment. He probably should have – he thinks maybe Richie had… no, he _definitely_ tried to reenact the ceramics scene when Eddie got them drinks later that night. “And, uh,” he clears his throat, trying to shake the memory out of his mind. “Even when he did that, I was an asshole: Richie gave all the xenomorphs voices and I just kept telling him they were dumb and to stop.”

“Eddie,” Stan says, his exasperated tone only getting flatter, which just makes Eddie that much more annoyed with the tone. “Did you _actually_ tell him to stop, or did you do that thing where you told him to shut up, but you were giggling the whole time?”

“No,” Eddie snaps, heat searing across his face in a flush of – of _anger_. “I don’t fucking _giggle_.”

“Uh huh,” Stan says, exhaling an aggravating breath of white noise and sarcasm into the receiver. “I’m pretty sure he was more addicted to making you do that than those shitty menthols he used to smoke.” He pauses, followed by a shuffle, then his voice goes somehow even more dry, as something audibly crinkles in the background. “Don’t get me wrong, both were incredibly shitty habits. … _Are_ , judging by this conversation.”

Eddie rolls his eyes, biting at the inside of his lip and feeling his flush worsen despite efforts otherwise. He hopes no one decides to just _pop in_ to his office right now, since he might kill them. He wishes he could kill Stan, a little.

“Seriously,” Stan says, continuing unawares of Eddie’s inner turmoil on if it might just be better to hang up on him mid-word – that’s _kind of_ a murder. “You know you can’t really change anything you said, it just kind of matters how you are with him now? Are you being an asshole _now_?”

“I told him that dogs playing card shirt was stupid,” Eddie mutters, knowing that Stan was in that particular group call. “But it _is_.”

“Okay, but you didn’t say _he_ looked bad,” Stan says, his tone reasonable like that statement makes any sense at all, instead of just making him sound stupid. “Before you used to be more like: that shirt just makes you _more_ ugly.”

Eddie repeats the words in his head, rearranging them a little, then grunts in quiet realization. “Shit, you’re right.”

“Or,” Stan continues, in that irritating knowing voice that he used to adopt when talking about anything from birds to the collective stupidity of any Loser but him. “You’d also say something like: I didn’t think you could look worse, but that shirt makes a point.”

Eddie grimaces hard, feeling his cheek twinge at the pressure. He definitely remembers saying stuff like that to Richie, usually without even thinking about it past the usual resolve to say the opposite of what he really thought about… everything except the terrible fashion sense.

Stan hums abruptly high, followed by another shuffle in the background. “Oh, do you remember those corduroy shorts he got from the thrift store that smelled like patchouli –”

Eddie blinks rapidly, feeling his mouth twist in confusion. “The what?”

“– You said they smelled better than he usually did.”

Eddie has _no_ goddamn clue what sad corpse’s shorts from fucking Good Will that Stan is talking about, but he does know one thing: “Fuck you, that was probably true! He smelled like weed and his dad’s cheap cologne ninety percent of the time.”

Stan sputters in what seems like some flat, strangled sort of laugh. “Because you told him he had BO!”

“He did!” Eddie snaps, heat flaring across his skin, as his conversation with Richie months ago practically gets shoved to the front of his mind. He can’t tell all that to Stan, though - it’s fucking _private_. “I wasn’t the only one who –”

“But you _were_ the one who always stole his sweatshirts!” Stan argues back, unknowingly stepping right into the steaming shit of the matter, then goes conspicuously quiet, only to brusquely hiss: “ _Kaspbrak_ , is that why you’re trying – ”

“No! Shut up!” Eddie ends the call with a short, slightly panicky twitch of his thumb, briefly shaking the phone in his hand. He doesn’t even remember why he called Stan – Wait, Stan called him…

Why did Stan call him, again?

Stan sends a text a few seconds later:

4:57PM _Real_ _mature_ >>

4:57PM _Taking_ _as a yes_ >>

<<Why the fuck did you even call me??? 4:59PM

Stan doesn’t respond for a few seconds, then the ellipsis start oscillating up and down and don’t stop for nearly a minute. It’s either really important or really stupid, and Eddie’s banking on the second right now mostly out of spite.

 _5:02PM_ _Bev is making Ben Internet famous by putting him in half of outfits from her new line – like just the grey jeans in this one and some hat she found_ >>

A link pops up a few seconds later to Instagram, which Eddie still hasn’t made an account for and is sort of holding out on. He clicks it only to be confronted with the sight of Ben Hanscom awkwardly posing while dressed as some sort of half-naked porn cowboy, promptly feeling guilty for the way his eyes immediately draw to the scar on his stomach rather than the muscle.

<<WTF 5:04PM

<<He looks like he’s about to pose for a romance novel cover 5:04PM

<<Gross. 5:05PM

5:07PM _Gross like Richie is gross or actually gross?_ >>

Eddie scowls hard, hunching a little when someone’s shadow passes the frosted glass wall of his office.

<< ¡ Fuck off ! 5:08PM

* * *

**December**

“You really can’t come?” Ben says, leaning forward to take the camera from Bev, using it to show off his giant couch and the rest of his comfily appointed sitting room, decorated for the holiday and showing hints of the Losers at all corners, from stray jackets to luggage to bird-themed wrapping paper on a bulky gift. “There’s still room.”

“I could for like two days and then come back,” Eddie says, shifting on his own sofa, which is more of a loveseat that came with the apartment – it’s not bad, at all, and the whole place is something he’s wanted for himself for years, but Ben showing off his cozy cliff-side abode does a lot to make his half-decorated flat feel even more empty. “Including flights. And travel. I _could_ drag it out to another appointment next month, but then she might see it as _dragging_ _it_ _out to next month_. I’m not giving her a fucking inch hang me with.”

Bill grimaces in some kind of sympathy, as if his amicably open relationship is anything comparable. “Right.”

“I need it over as soon as possible,” Eddie says, gesturing flatly while putting his tablet onto the arm of the loveseat. “So I’m dealing. I don’t know why you jerk offs couldn’t come to New York, anyway – it’s a fucking cliché for a reason.”

“Ben’s house is really nice,” Mike says, his face coming very close while he grabs the tablet from Ben, then moves the camera to face the giant Christmas tree again; he shakes it a little, in some likely cider-induced cheer. “Look at that tree – it’s _huge_.”

Eddie exhales a grumble, tugging at the hem of his sweatshirt and refusing to think about how he suddenly feels cold. “It’s not as big as the one at Rockefeller.”

“Oh, please,” Bev says, her head tilting onto Mike’s shoulder with a bright, betraying grin. “You told me last week you’ve been out to Times Square once _ever_ and it was enough.”

“So? You all could’ve gone,” Eddie says, not bothering to argue – it is factually true, he’s not ashamed of it. He fucking hates the tourists and the billboards, and the only redeemable part of it is that he never has a reason to go to that part of the city. “Richie would’ve fucking loved it – he’s attracted to bright colors.”

“Was that my name?” Richie’s voice calls from somewhere in the back, a kitchen judging by the clinks of glass. “Stop talking about me!”

“Then get in here!” Bev responds, looking over her shoulder, then turning back to the camera with a shake of her head and eye roll. “We told him it was time, but he got distracted.”

“Shock,” Eddie says, feeling a curl at the corner of his mouth that he hopes doesn’t look _too_ fond.

“Don’t even ask what he’s doing,” Stan says, reaching up and tugging his glasses from his face, tucking them into the collar of his shirt with a sigh and a pointed flattening of his lips. “Ben let him at the stove.”

“I’m asking fucking anyway,” Eddie snaps, about ten seconds from demanding someone bring him into the kitchen. He, and everyone else, knows Richie has been bafflingly gotten into hipster baking lately, despite Stan’s sarcasm, substituting dates and bananas and even black beans into everything, and Eddie’s going to be so pissed if he’s the last Loser to get to try it.

Sort of. Richie did FedEx him some slightly crumbly cinnamon cookies labeled _for Christmakkuh_ that were somehow 90% coconut. It shouldn’t have mattered, especially after the allergy test, but it _had_ felt nice eating something that was both good and contained nothing in it that he’d ever worried about making him sick.

“I wanted to make a toddy!” Richie defends with a shout, then his voice drops into what is still a very loud grumble, melodramatically whining at being barely admonished. “You try to do a guy a favor.”

Eddie blinks a few times, glancing between the other Losers trying to figure out the assertion. “What?”

“I’m trying to quit, uh,” Ben pauses, a twitch at the corner of his mouth, then his eyes briefly drop in a familiar shy expression. “Alcohol. But I’ve still got a lot of it here. Clearly.”

“Oh,” Eddie says, raising his brows and offering a smile that he hopes doesn’t look super awkward. “And he’s… getting rid of it.”

“Exactly – this is a service, Eds,” Richie says, his voice getting nearer, followed by a few loud clicks of his tongue. “I’ve never made one, but I’ve already decided they’re _way_ too much trouble.”

Eddie opens his mouth to ask if anything weird was put into the drink, only to instead burst into laughter the moment Richie comes in to frame as little more than fuzzy figure covered in actual _Christmas lights_ holding a white mug. “Oh my god,” he says, trying to quiet himself behind his knuckles, eyes just going wider the nearer Richie gets, as he slowly comes into real focus to reveal the knit of the sweater is just as gaudy. “Did you make _that_?”

“I fucking wish,” Richie says, grinning back widely and looking down while showing off the sweater with a T-pose. “My creativity is nowhere near this level.”

Eddie feels his brows try to go impossibly higher on his forehead, choking on another sharp bark of a laugh. “Creativity? It looks like the whole North Pole got shit out onto a few yards of fabric – you’re going to light yourself of fire with that thing.”

“They’re LEDs, man,” Richie says, shaking like a showgirl and making the lights jump, which definitely isn’t _any_ sort of attractive, no matter the direction that Eddie’s fucked up brain wants to go in. “Come on _,_ I know you feel more in the spirit already.”

“Isn’t this a Hanukkah year? You should’ve gotten one that let you control the lights,” Eddie says, while debating if it would be too much to text Richie just because he can that he consistently looks really good in sweaters, even ones that make him look like the Vegas Strip. He could also just buy him a nice one and have it shipped to his house, make it subtle, but then he’ll have given Richie a _sweater_ to wear in fucking _Malibu_.

“You and Maggie are the only ones who keep up with that,” Richie says, rolling his eyes with a dramatic, put-upon sigh, then abruptly dropping them to the sweater. “But _shit_ , when you’re right, you’re right.” He lifts his empty hand, thoughtfully pressing it over a light to make it disappear. “I could’ve totally asked them to do that, too.”

“You want to go to Times Square if we go to New York next Christmas?” Bill asks, turning half-way on the couch and looking up with a blink at Richie.

“Am I doing a show?” Richie says, tilting his head at Bill with a raised brow and a laugh, then gesturing at the camera with a jut of his chin. “Eddie hates Times Square – Oh! But there’s like a tiny train thing in the Bronx? We should totally do _that_ next year.”

“Trains,” Stan repeats flatly, turning to slowly look at Eddie, who takes the opportunity of every one looking at Richie to flip him off.

“It has bird tours, too, buzzkill, it’s at the Botanical Gardens,” Richie says, taking his turn at giving Stan the finger with an awkward turn of his hand on the mug. “I went during a tour there in like 2006.” He looks down at Eddie, shifting his fingers to point a little less aggressively, “Have you done the train thing?”

“Uh, no,” Eddie says, shaking his head with a short glance away under the guise of grabbing his soda from the table. “I know what you’re talking about, though.”

“Really? But you’ve lived there for like fucking ever,” Richie says, leaning in closer to the camera for a few seconds in a peering loom between Stan and Ben.

“So?” Eddie says, looking up with a challenging lift of his chin.

Richie raises an eyebrow back, taking a sip of his toddy and quiet for a few too many beats. “I thought you’d be into it.”

“I would be, yeah,” Eddie says, hearing the unspoken question and a little self-conscious at how quickly he answers it. He thinks if it were just Richie and him, he might admit that he’s thought about going to the trains every Christmas since he found out about them, over fifteen years ago, but never really had anyone he felt comfortable asking to go with him. Except it isn’t just them. The rest of the Losers are staring, too, and don’t know about him and Richie, or the bar, or the _other_ bar, _or_ their sort of a thing, so he’s not sure how to react with Richie standing there all but asking _him_ to go, except apparently stammer and go red, but the low light is hopefully hiding that from the camera. “I – I haven’t made time. But I _could_.”

“Okay, we’re definitely going next year,” Richie says, pushing up his glasses at the bridge with a stare for Eddie that lasts seconds longer, then abruptly he drops his head to look down to the other Losers. “And there’ll be birds for Stamantha and kettle corn for everyone else.”

“I do like kettle corn,” Mike says dreamily, nodding slow while turning to salute the camera with a near-empty glass of something very orange and probably mulled. “Good plan, Eddie.”

Eddie raises an eyebrow, dropping his voice flat. “Thanks, Mikey.”

“Hey!” Richie protests, as the rest of the Losers break into laughter around him.

* * *

**January**

Eddie gets _the_ call on a Friday morning, nearly six months after he started proceedings, and feels his mouth settle half-open into a grin while his lawyer congratulates him, assuring that a more official email would follow. He feels a little weightless for a good two hours after, which he knows is noticed by the others at the firm by the looks they send his way in the morning meetings; he gets legitimately distracted after that, once he’s alone with it, feeling almost zero guilt with the rest of his day set aside for busywork that he technically doesn’t need done today or maybe ever.

The endless little jokes from Richie inviting himself over, or sneaking into the office, or breaking into the apartment – Eddie can let him do that now. He can invite him to do that now and can…

He can even make it sort of a _thing_.

Because it’s kind of a _big deal._

It takes Eddie only a few minutes realize what it is he wants to do, where he wants to take Richie that might seem significant, but then another hour or so to remember the name with a heavy use of Google Maps. He’s a little shocked he finds it, actually, nearly twenty years later and all on a fuzzy recollection of a streets.

He calls Richie near the end of the day, a little uncertain what he might be doing, and takes a breath just as the phone picks up; he ends up spitting it out before Richie even finishes a dramatically Voiced greeting. “Do you still want to make a thing out of it together?”

“Hey- _okay_ , uh,” Richie pauses, near-silent for a couple of tense seconds, then hums upward in plain confusion. “Yes? I guess. What are we talking about?”

“Coming out,” Eddie says, wetting his lips and then rolling them tight together, hoping Richie can’t hear any of his nerves in his voice. He taps just at the edge of his mouse pad, fingers dully thunking on the glass desktop. “My divorce is finalized on Tuesday.”

“Oh – _oh_ ,” Richie intones, a little pitchy, which probably shouldn’t be any sort of funny, but Eddie can practically see the comically widened eyes and oversize frames. “If you’re sure, I’d – I’m totally ready.”

“I am,” Eddie says, then swallows a little, nerves flaring at what he has to say next; how he has to frame it, because it’s what he _wants_ and he needs Richie to know it before anything else. “Except not an actual huge thing, maybe, but just a uh, a date in public? I’m sure someone’ll see you.”

“Oh, you mean _like_ – ” Richie’s voice actually starts to crack and he breaks it with a cough, going quiet for a few beats before he starts up again, “A _date_ date? Not to seem like I wouldn’t – I would – I’m not hesitating! I want to!”

Eddie rolls his eyes, feeling a little better about his own anxiety. “Okay?”

Richie doesn’t respond for a worryingly long time, then something clinks in the background. “I’m just kinda surprised,” he says, even laughing a little, but it’s not a nice sound and his voice sheds any humor in only a few sparse words. “...That _you_ would.”

Eddie pulls the phone back to blink widely at the screen, silently using his other hand to gesture with a curling fist at the phone in irked disbelief. “Okay, maybe I’m confused because they were, you know, conversations, but I could swear we regularly say a lot of things we like about each other. _Non-platonically._ I’d almost call it flirting if I didn’t have any goddamn dignity.”

“I… I guess I thought maybe you were just –” Richie pauses, practically grumbling, but his attitude is definitely picking up a little.

Eddie swallows hard, dropping his head down to sweep a thumb and finger across his eyes. “No, Richard,” he says, quietly, “Whatever bullshit you’re thinking – I wasn’t.”

“Are you really, _really_ sure though, because I think I –” Richie stops abruptly, then shortly clears his throat, his next words somehow even more subdued. “I really like you, Eddie.”

“I like you, too,” Eddie says, immediately feeling like it’s not a strong enough of a statement. ‘ _Like’ –_ what are they, back in high school? He’s had varying fantasies of some kind of forever with Richie, including a few incredibly embarrassing ones during that too-long time that Richie was just a famous guy he shared a secret with, and he fucking says he _likes_ him. “Nothing I’ve said about being attracted to you for the last _six months_ was a joke, okay? I’ve wanted a date – like, a real one – with you for a really long time. I want to kiss you in public, Rich.”

Richie takes an audibly sharp breath. “Oh.”

“Yeah, so,” Eddie swallows, reaching out and moving the mouse to wake his screen back up, clicking on the Facebook page through to the bar website. “You know. Do you want to next week or not? Or do you want to wait until the fucking train exhibition, because I’m holding you to that, Richie.”

“Of course _now_ ; shit, Eds,” Richie says, his laugh a lot more light this time, though there’s still a noticeable edge to it of disbelief. “I can get us like – okay, maybe not anywhere on short notice, but a lot of places.”

Eddie stares at the website, staring at a familiar corner in a picture that showcases the entire bar. “I had something in mind, but I don’t know – we can figure it out when you get here.”

“Oh, so I’m coming to New York? Why can’t you come out to LA?” Richie says, mood cheering by a huge measure in the span of a quick huff. “Come west, young man.”

“Because I have a real job that I’d like to keep?” Eddie says flatly, reaching up and scratching at the bridge of his nose with his middle finger in a way that he imagines Richie can see from the opposite coast.

“I have a _real job_ ,” Richie says, a histrionic tone of offense to his voice that sounds straight out of, and may actually be from, a cartoon. “I make _way_ more scratch than _you_ , sir.”

“You told me last week you figured out how to improve the quality of your audition recordings by doing them in the closet with a bunch of blankets,” Eddie says, shaking his head a little in the same reaction that he’d had at the time. “If you need one, I’ve got two.”

Richie snorts loudly, then breaks into a more open laugh. “I’m gonna put this all down as a double entendre bit, by the way – us talking about coming out and me finding other ways to stay in closets. You know, get it?”

“Get the tickets, Rich,” Eddie says, rolling his eyes hard, though it does sound a little funny, and it definitely helps some of the lasting tension to fade from his shoulders. If Richie’s already planning jokes about it, then he must be coming to see him. “Your life is more than just your next big joke.”

Richie is quiet for a few seconds, then gasps overdramatically, voice swinging in pitch. “Holy shit, Eds, did you just get _real_ with me?”

“I will hang up,” Eddie says, pulling the phone away just to make a point, though his hand doesn’t shift any closer to the screen. “I swear to fucking Christ, Trashmouth.”

“Nah, you won’t,” Richie says, outright laughing at the threat, which nearly makes Eddie go through with it just out of reflex. “I got those aviator frames, by the way.”

Eddie blinks at the call screen, feeling a grin curling at his mouth. “Really?”

“Yep,” Richie says, sounding very proud of himself; it’s easy to imagine him doing some sort of goofy face framing with his hands. “Pretty snazzy, I got to say.”

Eddie leans away from his desk with a push, turning around with a crook of his ankle to look at the city. “Take a picture.”

“N _op_ e,” Richie says, a smile distinct in his tone, though suddenly, noticeably distracted by the fading pitch. He goes quiet for a few seconds, then hums, “You can see them next week on… Thursday?”

“Yeah,” Eddie says, running a hand through his hair and feeling his smile go even wider, heart thudding beneath his ribs at the thought of how soon that is – not even a whole week. He kind of wants to scream it to the city, sitting up here overlooking it and really feeling like he’s gotten something golden. “Sounds good. You should try to get here like in the afternoon.”

Richie clicks his tongue in a random tune. “No problemo.”

* * *

**February**

“Holy shit, they’re _red_.”

“Figures you’d say that first,” Richie says, but he’s preening, sweeping a hand against the bright, fire-engine red frames to recenter them on his face; they’re mostly plastic, which is typical, but definitely aviator shaped. “Less dweeb-y than you thought, huh.”

Eddie grins a little, ignoring a little voice in the back of his head crowing about it being _his_ favorite color. “No narcissistic selfies for Twitter?”

“God, you’re such a stalker,” Richie says, shaking his head while he ducks it just a little, then looking back at Eddie while his mouth widens in a grin. “That’s totally why, too – I wanted it to be a surprise.”

“I’m kind of impressed how well you pull them off, actually,” Eddie says, leaning back a few inches more and using a bogus assessment as an excuse to just stare for a few seconds. “They’re _really_ red.”

“And _,”_ Richie says, lifting his hand to gesture to the pink shirt he’s wearing under his jacket patterned with bright red lips that are nearly perfect hue match to the glasses. “Eh, _eh_?

“Oh, for February,” Eddie realizes, then rolls his eyes back up to Richie’s face, attempting to flatten his grin into a line. “Or did you already have that shirt?”

Richie tilts his head back and forth, humming as if actually thinking on it. “Well… both.”

Eddie attempts to exhale an annoyed sigh, but it half-strangles in his throat when he can barely take it anymore and moves a step forward to wrap his arms around Richie’s neck. He squeezes tight and hears Richie oomph, pressing his face into the collar of that ridiculous as fuck shirt for a few unyielding seconds; he hates that his divorce kept this from happening for so long. Who spitefully schedules meetings around holidays? Myra _once-again_ Schun, apparently.

And his firm, but at least he gets bonuses and commission for _that_ shit show.

“Eds,” Richie exhales, breath sweeping against Eddie’s ear while his hands settle big across his back. “Jeez. It’s not that great of a shirt.”

“Fuck you,” Eddie says, determinedly forcing away an absolutely insane impulse to see if Richie could hold him up; he knows he can carry him on his back – he _knows_ it, though the circumstances involved water and maybe some lingering adrenaline. He directs Richie toward the exit with a weak tug at the duffle strap around his shoulder. “How long are you here?”

“I kind of…” Richie looks up demonstrably toward the ceiling with a hiss. “Don’t know? I got a one-way ticket.”

Eddie pause midstep, then forces himself to keep going when Richie markedly stumbles at the change in pace. “And, let me guess, no hotel?”

Richie hums in a high pitch, glancing back down with a narrow look. “You’re sending a lot of mixed messages, Eds.”

“Shut up,” Eddie says, glancing briefly at Richie’s duffle bag with a small sigh through his nose; is he planning on buying a new _wardrobe_? “Maybe I don’t put out on the first date.”

Richie drops his head in a heavy nod with a grin. “Ah… _Anymore_.”

“Or at all, you keep this up,” Eddie says, looking back to Richie’s face with a forced frown, lifting a pointed finger to wag in front of his nose. “You’re already setting a bad impression. Maybe I don’t want you to know where I live.”

“Impression?” Richie repeats, leaning forward with his free hand shoving into his pocket the moment they hit the tunnel. “Our _first_ impression was – Oh, hey,” He looks back and forth, blinking wide at Eddie like some kind of gawky bird. “Are we taking _public transportation_?”

“I like trains,” Eddie says, ducking his head a little while they enter the line for the turnstiles.

“Yeah, but you hate the underground kind,” Richie says, immediately picking up on exactly what Eddie is trying to avoid talking about and wearing an edge to his smile like he knows it. He tips his head with raised brows, eyes going wide in some mildly offensive display of incredulity. “Like, pathologically. I was kind of hoping to see your new _Geländewagen_

Eddie wets his lips, getting irritated by both the stupid accent and the continuing third degree. “It’s getting window tint.”

“Huh,” Richie says, lowly and plainly dubious, eyes sweeping while they make it out onto the platform. “ _Okay_.”

“It is,” Eddie mutters, and though he didn’t _have_ to do it today, it’s just… how it worked out.

Richie goes quiet for a few seconds, then his elbow nudges at Eddie just as the train starts to come down, adopting a Voice that is probably supposed to be knightly. “Worry not, I’ll protect you from those tiny foes.”

Eddie rolls his eyes, glancing up at Richie through the corner of them.

“I will,” Richie insists, abruptly moving closer just as the doors slide open in front of them, throwing an arm around Eddie’s shoulders while they step forward into the narrow car. “Just dare them to attack.”

Richie summarily hooks his other arm and bag around a pole, tugging Eddie into his chest while setting his feet, as the narrow chasm of germs and stray hair that Eddie is _not_ thinking about starts to move with a whoosh of air. “So, Eds, where we going?”

Eddie tries to look up at Richie and realizes that he’s being held solidly enough, despite the sway of the car, that he might really not have to touch a single part of the train. He swallows a little, feeling heat rise across his neck. “My place first, then you’ll see.”

“Mysterious,” Richie says, squeezing Eddie a little bit tighter for a pair of seconds, then laughing a little annoyingly right in his ear. “Turned around quick on me not seeing your place, though.”

“Oh, fuck off,” Eddie says, reaching back to thump Richie in the hip.

The trip back to his place is a little long, and Eddie keeps waiting for Richie to get tired, or to at least complain, but he stays glued to Eddie almost the entire ride, even when they switch trains. He does take Richie’s bag and refuse to let him in the building, just for the earlier comment, ignoring dramatic whines about the bathroom or a nap. It’s kind of a shame how late and dark it is by the time Eddie gets Richie in front of where he’s wanted him all week, destroying the fantasy Eddie had about walking him up to it at the golden hour, but it probably helps the ambiance for the memory this way.

“Holy shit,” Richie says, lowly, staring up at the slightly mossy awning with his jaw half open, turning wide eyes on Eddie with a weak laugh. “I almost can’t believe it’s still here.”

“Yeah, I couldn’t either,” Eddie says, smirking a little at the reaction, feeling somehow proud, and lifts a hand to gesture cyclically in front of them in the vague direction of the bar. “It’s cleaner, though – I looked records up.”

Richie laughs again, louder, his expression a little less shocked. “Of course.”

“Fuck off,” Eddie says, stepping forward down into the entrance with a nervous shrug.

The inside is nearly the same, despite the intervening years, but it does really seem like less of a dive, between the gleaming, polished tables and people eating what look like actual meals instead of just wings or queso. He blinks a little in surprise when he catches a pair of empty seats near the end of the bar, darkened by an overhang and just out of direct line of the closest mounted television. He reaches out and takes Richie’s wrist, dragging him in that direction, who quickly catches on to the coincidence with a pitchy, startled hum.

“Oh man,” Richie says, slipping into the stool at the same place they had once sat nearly twenty years ago. “Did you plan _this_? You can totally lie.”

“No, it just worked out,” Eddie says, lifting his chin with a deep breath while sliding in to the next stool. “Honestly, we could’ve sat anywhere, I’m really just glad to uh, be with you,” he says tightly, then clears his throat, not that it does much for it. “Again. Hopefully, a lot more times.”

“Shit man, you fucking…” Richie laughs again, color visibly flooding high in his cheeks and handsome as hell for it. “Wow.”

“Shut up, I’m trying,” Eddie says, reaching up and scratching at the back of his head. He raises his hand when the bartender walks close, ordering a gin and cranberry with a tightness in his voice that he hopes goes unnoticed, then listens to Richie interrogate the bartender about tap and order some kind of beer that sounds like it might be from another planet.

“I’m trying, too,” Richie says, dragging his teeth across his lower lip, his grin small but candid. “I’m like really into it - this. _You_. Doing this.”

“It’s kind of fucking cheesy, I know, but I – it’s not fucking _Derry_ ,” Eddie says, hearing himself practically spit the word, voice picking up as his nerves skitter the longer Richie stares at him. “I’d rather _this_ be some place we remember and like come back to. Like I don’t want to forget being kids again or whatever and a lot of it wasn’t shitty, but. Yeah?”

“Yeah, I mean. I get now it wasn’t, you know, like… love at first sight, or anything,” Richie says, his voice low and in a rush, head shaking a little while his eyes eyes flick back and forth from Eddie with an apparent difficulty to look right at him, which is a feeling fully shared at hearing the uncertain words. “But it – it felt like it, at the time. I can still remember seeing you sitting here at the bar, you know: your hair was all loose and your shirt was too big, and you were staring up at the Rangers game like you were losing a bet. I bought you a beer and then found out you were actually thinking about green mold.”

Eddie exhales some weak attempt at a scoff, looking away while their drinks are set onto the bar and hesitantly wrapping his fingers around the rim of his glass. “I can’t believe you remember all that.”

He can remember Richie, too, though: his ill-fitted leather jacket, his home haircut, the way he had made jokes about everything Eddie said, but in a way that seemed like he _really_ listened to him. It had been kind of intimidating how well they fit, and certainly the reason Eddie had cut and run after they got each other off in the bathroom; he had known he was gay, but he hadn’t had to really confront the idea of wanting a future with a man until that night – not that he could _remember_. He’d gone out with…Matt? No, _Mark_ , who he felt lukewarm with at best, but Richie… He had been exactly Eddie wanted, plus the sort of personality he had never expected to. It had scared him how much he just _wanted_ with Richie – wanted to kiss him, to laugh with him, to take him back to his dorm; mostly, though, he had wanted, within only a few minutes of conversation, to see Richie every day.

It makes sense now, though, and might even be considered a _rational_ response in hindsight. He had felt all of those things as a teenager, up to and including some of the fear, but as a co-ed with amnesia, he didn’t have the right perspective of it. The goddamn clown really fucked him over by leaving just enough memory to make that night to haunt him.

“I’m pretty smart, you know,” Richie says, picking up his pint to clink it against Eddie’s glass with a pair of raised eyebrows that just emphasis his ridiculous new frames. “I was _valedictorian,_ remember?”

“Fuck off with that,” Eddie says, staring up at Richie and feeling fond, as a smile grows wider across his face the same. “I still don’t know how that happened.”

“Hard work and a low bar, _Eddie B-Average Kaspbrak_ ,” Richie says, apparently not in the mood to be understated. He takes a sip of his beer, eyes glancing away while he rubs his lip against the foam for a beat, then offers an appeasing shrug to Eddie’s frown. “And maybe Mike being homeschooled. He liked helping with homework way too much - it’s probably why he became a librarian.”

Eddie feels his face relax while he snorts hard through his nose.

“You gotta stop laughing at these shitty jokes,” Richie says, putting his beer down seemingly just to better exaggerate a scolding gesture. “I wasn’t lying about my engorged – ”

Eddie leans in and kisses him, right at the bar, like he’d been too scared to do twenty years ago. He slips his hand around Richie’s nape, pretending for a few seconds that he’s twenty-one again, taken by this square-jawed, perpetually joking dork, and that the next twenty years could be anything.

Or even better, he thinks as he pulls back, they had never forgotten each other in the first place. A time and a place where Richie had been in the city, at the bar, just to see _him_ , and Eddie wasn’t scared at all because they’d been past that for years.

“You want to _really_ relive our last time here?” Richie asks lowly, brows wagging and a laugh in his voice that means he already knows well the answer.

“Uh, no, asshole – we’re way too old,” Eddie says, though he lets his eyes flicker in the direction of the darkened hall to the restroom.

“You’re never too old to live a little,” Richie says, his hand landing high on Eddie’s thigh with a significant squeeze. It’s solid, even distracting, and he seems to know it by the twitch of a grin, but he doesn’t push it further; instead, he just abruptly makes an aghast face. “No, don’t tell me – your knees that bad from all that office action?”

Eddie rolls his eyes hard, shifting his own hand to palm across the solid line of Richie’s neck; he thinks that he should drop his hand and pull away, but he… It’s almost like he _can’t_ stop touching him. “I wish I’d gotten your number,” he admits, quietly, blinking down and then back to Richie. “An email, maybe? I keep wondering how things might’ve been.”

“If I’d been there to tell your mom to fuck off,” Richie muses, turning into the attention with a smile light across his mouth, “Do you think she’d have remembered me? Who am I kidding – how could she _not_?”

“I… don’t know,” Eddie says, magnanimously ignoring the joke while idly scratching his thumbnail over a patch of stubble on Richie’s jaw. “Probably would’ve made her stroke happen sooner in any case.”

Richie predictably barks a laugh, prompting Eddie to drop his fingers between the undone buttons of his shirt and pull sharply at a few peeking strands of chest hair. He squeaks and flinches back, covering his chest like a startled bather, as his jaw drops cartoonishly aghast. “ _Ow_ , you asshole – that was entrapment.”

Eddie hums shortly, a smirk twitching across his mouth while he reaches down for his beer. “I didn’t force you to laugh.”

“Damn,” Richie says, making a show of buttoning his shirt up to his throat and consequently looking like a priest for some kind of technicolor dreamcult. “I’m going to have to trim this shit – ”

“Don’t you fucking dare,” Eddie says, pointing around his glass between Richie’s face and his hidden away chest.

“My body! My rules!” Richie insists, _loudly_ , leaning away precariously on his stool while sliding his hands down from collar to hem. “This carpet is about to go hardwood.”

“Oh my god,” Eddie mutters, badly stifling a snort, then incidentally catches half the tables behind Richie looking over in interest. He drops his half empty glass back onto the bar and covers his face, mostly as an attempt to wrestle down more laughter with his palms.

“Hey, Eds,” Richie says, his breath right next to Eddie’s ear and fingers poking hard at his shoulder. “ _Hey.”_

Eddie drags his hands down from his face, forcing a surly expression while looking up at Richie from under his brows. “ _What.”_

“You’re cute as shit,” Richie says, leaning in to press a kiss to Eddie’s mouth, wide grin fitting all too perfectly over his put-on scowl. “And actually good at choosing dates.”

Eddie raises an irked eyebrow. “Thanks for the fucking confidence.”

“No really!” Richie says, gesturing out flippantly between them with a few swings of near-boneless hand. “I was totally freaking out like about this whole thing – not _you_ , just me – but then I saw you in the airport and… And now it’s totally good.”

Eddie stares back evenly, a little suspect at the particularly obvious raise in pitch toward the end.

“Not totally,” Richie amends, wetting his lips while reaching into his pocket, pulling out his phone with a flash of the black screen. “I turned off my phone right after we got sat down, but I – ” He shrugs, putting it facedown on the bar with a half-smile. “It will be?

It reminds Eddie of how he handled demanding a divorce months ago, afraid to see the consequences of what he had to do. It hadn’t been good, not for months and technically not even now, but that push to get to this part, to be with Richie again without anything keeping him back, after the court dates and crying and every spiteful argument… It has kept _him_ going, at least. “Yeah, Rich, it will.”

* * *

_7:14PM Rich Tozier Seen **Out** with Mystery Man in Manhattan!?>>_

“I hate that he’s famous enough to have a mystery man,” Bev says, offering a put upon sigh with the texted article that’s really more of a laugh. She goes silent for a few seconds, which Eddie doesn’t even attempt to fill, waiting a little anxious for her to say it first. “But that is you, right? Because if he’s trying to date someone who looks like you… it’s going to create some tension.”

“My whole-ass face is in that picture, Bev,” Eddie says, frowning at a wine label – he doesn’t know what the fuck this shit means except the year.

“And it looks… _hm_ ,” Bev pauses, then a familiar voice mutters in the background, followed by Bev agreeing with a low hum. “Besotted, Ben says.”

Eddie rolls his eyes up to the tacky, faux old world ceiling. How very _poetic._ “Okay?”

“So,” Bev says, drawing out the word a little, a smile in it that is both a friendly sort of curious and plainly annoyed. “How long have you two not told your friends about this?”

Eddie slides the wine back into place on the rack; he’s just going to get the merman beer in the front – Richie’ll think it’s funny. “I’ll have to talk to him before I answer that.”

“Are you guys not _together_ together?” Bev says, having the gall to sound a little disapproving, dropping into a flat tone. “Eddie, hun, he braved New York in February for you. And got papped.”

“Shut up, I just don’t know the _how long_ ,” Eddie admits, switching the phone to his other ear while kneeling and reaching out to pick up the six pack with a few clinks of glass.

Bev is quiet a beat, then takes a short breath. _“_ Uh _,_ what?”

“You know what? Ask _him_ ,” Eddie says, stepping behind a slightly intimidating, ambulatory fur coat that glares pointedly over a shoulder at his phone from under an ushanka. He starts to pull it from his ear, seizing the excuse with both hands. “I have to go, anyway - I’m in the checkout line. Bye.”

He gets a series of buzzes to his hip a few minutes later, as he crosses the street onto his block. He sighs hard while shifting the bags on his arm, wincing a little at a hard knock against his laptop, and pulls out the phone while pressing at its screen to expand the _stack_ of texts.

7:29PM _Weird question_ >>

7:29PM _Or not that weird lol just not sure_ >>

7:30PM _How long would you say we’ve been ~involved~ and not told the losers_ >>

7:30PM _Wink wink_ >>

7:30PM _;) ;)_ >>

Eddie rolls his eyes down the street, staring at the not-so distant entrance to his building. He can probably swing an extra circuit or two around the block, even with his bag and groceries; he hasn’t had a chance to workout since Richie got to town.

<<Not it. 7:31PM

<<Guess who told her to ask you 7:31PM

7:32PM _Nooo_ >>

**Author's Note:**

> I can also be found on twitter [ @ ezlebe](https://twitter.com/ezlebe?lang=en)


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